


the names of our fallen shall long be sung

by advanced_fanatic



Series: & if that was me, then who am i? [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: F/F, Future Fic, Gen, Hospice, Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Alice "Daisy" Tonner Are Best Friends, Memory Loss, POV Outsider, Regrets, Service Dogs, The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing, also i stand by the fact that had melanie not been shot by the ghost, also it's off screen, and jon attracts angry lesbians, basira is off doing her own thing though, because of the inherent consent issues with jon forgetting everything, daisy is still dead though, except not really, georgie and jon kind of have a conversation, georgie! and! melanie! are! in! love!, i'm not tagging this as jonmartin, jon forgets everything, melanie and georgie are married, oh yeah, or like a pi, she and jon would have been best friends, she's probably writing a book or something, since jon doesn't remember anything, they were almost friends when she started working at the institute, they! are! happy!, this is the hill i will die on, this is very important to me, where is martin? i don't know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:55:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27172076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/advanced_fanatic/pseuds/advanced_fanatic
Summary: David Ramao, a doctor at a hospice care center after the world is Changed back, gets two pairs of strange visitors: one right after the world is set to rights, and the other six years later, when society has climbed to its feet once more.
Relationships: David Ramao & Melanie King, Georgie Barker & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Georgie Barker/Melanie King, Martin Blackwood & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Melanie King & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Series: & if that was me, then who am i? [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1965298
Comments: 8
Kudos: 47





	the names of our fallen shall long be sung

In the dew-soft mornings after the change, a large soft man with a sad face that looked like it had once been made to smile approached a hospice center, gently leading a small Arab man with vacant eyes. Dr. David Ramao was a little surprised, honestly; after everything had Changed back, a lot of people had lost their faith in medical personnel, and for good reason, too. Dr. Ramao hated that he had been complicit in it, hated his actions as “Dr. David”, but...he couldn’t bring himself to hate the fact that he’d been tortured like so many people were. He had hated his time in the vase; he didn’t want to imagine having to be in that times one hundred, when the world was a fear hellscape.

All that being said, he was surprised when the sad man quietly asked him to care for his companion, explaining that the Changes had been hard on him, and his memory was shot, and he was sorry but he wasn’t in a physical or emotional state to take care of him.

Dr. Ramao agreed, of course, remembering how Andre’s vase had caused him to forget objects, and then himself, and watched as the sad man hugged his companion tightly, whispering reassurances, before handing him over to Dr. Ramao.

“If anything even  _ resembling _ malpractice happens to him, if he receives  _ anything _ less than the  _ best _ care possible, you will  _ wish _ you were still in the fear hellscape, and you will  _ wish _ that you were one of the victims,” the man threatened.

“I understand,” Dr. Ramao told him. “I’ll do my best to make sure he receives the best care possible.”

The sad man looked relieved. “Thank you,” he said, and he hugged his companion one last time, and walked away without looking back.

Society slowly but surely healed, in the years following. Dr. Ramao never did get either man’s name, so he and the other staff took to calling their first patient “John Doe”. He responded to it well, and after a few years even managed to remember their names, most of the time. They got him a service dog, which he named Daisy and spent hours with. As he had grown more capable of remembering things, it was harder to keep his attention on any one thing for any period of time, but Daisy somehow managed to keep and hold his attention (even if there were several concerning instances of him tapping bite scars on his legs and instructing her to attack, claiming that “he deserved it” and “she did it before”, although when questioned, he had no memory of when or why it had happened. The prevailing theory was that he’d had a dog named Daisy in the past, which had bitten him badly, and this was his memories partially resurfacing.

And then, five years after the world had more or less returned to normalcy, Melanie King showed up at the hospice.

Everyone knew who Melanie King was. Along with Georgie Barker, Basira Hussain, Martin Blackwood, and Jonathan Sims, she had sealed away the Fears and set the world to rights again. She was a  _ hero, _ and there was literally no reason for her to be here. Dr. Ramao could see Georgie Barker in the driver’s seat of the car, tapping something on her phone, as Melanie’s white cane aggressively swept in front of her.

“Hi, uh, Dr. Ramao? We spoke on the phone a couple months ago?” She held out her hand to shake, which he did, vigorously.

“Yes, it’s an honor to meet you, Miss King.”

“Barker-King, now, actually,” she corrected. “Georgie and I just got back from our honeymoon a few weeks ago. Anyway, you said you had a mysterious patient with memory issues who was checked in a few days after everything Changed back?”

“Yes, John Doe. The, ah, the current theory for who he was is that he was one of the Stranger avatars, and the man who checked him in got...attached, or something. He doesn’t seem dangerous.” Dr. Ramao had started to lead Melanie down the corridor as he spoke, and she listened intently.

“Can you describe him to me?” she asked.

Dr. Ramao complied, starting with a physical description (although he felt kind of stupid, decribing the man’s features to a blind woman, but she nodded at him to keep going whenever he faltered) before explaining his condition and treatments.

“He named the wolfhound Daisy?” Melanie asked, sounding amused. “That’s...on the nose.”

“How so?” asked Dr. Ramao.

“If he’s who we think he is…” She shook her head. “But anyway. That’s not important right now. This is his room, right?”

“It is.”

Melanie nodded, letting go of Dr. Ramao’s arm and opening the door. Daisy the service dog looked up and padded over.

“Oh, er, hello Doctor,” said John Doe. 

Melanie hissed a sharp intake through her teeth.  _ “Jon,” _ she said, sounding somehow relieved and furious at once.

John Doe frowned, looking slightly confused. “Ah. Yes?”

Melanie turned to Dr. Ramao, her teeth bared in what could have been a smile, had it not been so angry. “Could I have a few minutes alone with Jon, please? Thanks.” She didn’t wait for a response before stepping inside and closing the door in his face. Dr. Ramao stood there for a minute before walking back down to reception, just in time for Georgie Barker-King to come barreling inside.

“Take me to Jon,” she demanded.

“I...er...what?” Dr. Ramao said, feeling like he’d very thoroughly lost track of what was going on.

“Jon! I, I didn’t think this was actually where he would be, I thought he would still be with Martin, but Melanie insisted that we at least look, especially after that paper you guys published, thinking he was a cut off Stranger avatar? But I didn’t want to get my hopes up...where is he?”

“Wait,” Dr. Ramao said, “is John Doe actually Jonathan Sims?”

Georgie fixed him with an unimpressed look. “Where is he, Doctor?”

“I, er, right this way, Mrs. Barker-King,” he said, reeling with the revelation that he had  _ one of the heroes who had restored the world in his hospice, _ and he  _ hadn’t known about it. _ He wondered if that made the man who had brought him here Martin Blackwood. 

Georgie followed him, her heels clacking loudly against the linoleum. She looked on the sadder edge of angry, and Dr. Ramao debated asking if she was alright. If he had been friends with someone, and they’d ended up like Jonathan Sims, he would be upset, too, especially if he didn’t learn about it for six years.

He opened the door, where Melanie was talking, slightly uncomfortably, with Jonathan, who didn’t seem to have recognized her but seemed glad of the company anyway.

Georgie stepped inside. “Mel, could I have...a few minutes with him?”

“Yeah, of course.” Melanie stood quickly, grabbing her cane and heading out. Georgie closed the door behind her.

“It must be hard, seeing your friend like that,” Dr. Ramao said.

Melanie shook her head. “He wasn’t my friend, not really,” she said. “He was a dick. There was a point in time where we could have been friends. If things were different, we probably could have been very good friends. We were similar, once. Things changed. We changed.” She sighed. “We were almost friends again, before the Change, but...we weren’t. Things got bad. We all made choices.”

“You saved the world,” Dr. Ramao said.

Melanie shrugged. “It didn’t make things better for us. At least...not interpersonally. Martin and Jon were the first to leave. We hadn’t heard from either of them in years, and we didn’t think anything of it! Georgie and Jon hadn’t been speaking for months before the Change, because  _ I _ made her choose between us, because I didn’t see that Jon was just as trapped as I was. And then...I was willing to be friends with him again, and she wasn’t, and it didn’t even matter, because he needed the sort of friends who were able to be a part of it all, and we weren’t that. And then Daisy died, technically before the Change, although she didn’t die physically until Basira and Jon had to shoot her in one of the domains. Basira left, too, and even though she came to the wedding, she left early and we barely spoke. We saved the world, but...we’re all messes.”

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Ramao said.

Melanie let out a frustrated huff. “No,  _ I’m _ sorry, you shouldn’t have had to hear me vent like that. I’m just...worried.”

“That is pretty reasonable a thing to worry about,” Dr. Ramao pointed out. 

Melanie shrugged.

“It’s not your fault that Mrs. Barker-King chose you over Jonathan, though,” he said. “It was her choice.”

“She made it because  _ I _ hated him, because  _ I _ couldn’t stand to be in the same room as him,” Melanie said.

“It sounds like you were in a pretty traumatic situation, though,” Dr. Ramao said.

“We both were. It doesn’t change the fact that I’m myself again, totally free, with an amazing wife and a wonderful cat and a high-paying job and a good therapist, and he’s...an empty, abandoned shell with nothing and nobody. I know Georgie feels awful about it, and so do fucking I.”

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Ramao said again, for lack of anything better to say.

“Yeah,” sighed Melanie, tapping her combat boots with thick silver chains on them against the floor. “Me too.”

“You said you had a friend named Daisy?” Dr. Ramao asked, after a few moments.

“Not really my friend. She was another Assistant. Former crooked cop, doing her best to cut herself off from the Hunt. She was Basira’s partner and Jon’s best friend. I...never really talked to her all that much. I’m not surprised Jon named his dog after her. It’s pretty big, and...from what I heard, when she went full Hunt, so was she.”

“She turned into a dog?” Dr. Ramao asked, surprised.

“Or a wolf. Basira and Martin weren’t super clear on the details. She tried to eat Jon. Tried to get Basira to give in to the Hunt. Sounded like it was a pretty bad time all around, to be completely honest.”

“Yeah,” Dr. Ramao said.

The door opened, and Georgie stuck her head out, eyes slightly bloodshot. “You can come back in now,” she said, her voice slightly thick.

Melanie pushed herself off the wall.

“See you later, Doctor,” she said, and headed into Jonathan Sims’ hospice care room.

“I’ll see you later. Stay as long as you need.”

“We will, thanks,” said Georgie, and the door closed behind them as Dr. Ramao started off to see to his other patients.


End file.
